bootstrap environment
=====================

'bootstrap' generates all the autoconf/automake/gettext
infrastructure.  This is done on the developer's computer; thanks to
this, users and distros don't have to run it, nor do they need to same
versions of all the auto* dependencies.

When we make a bug-fix release, which needs to be as close to the
previous release as possible (to avoid introducing other changes than
the bugfix), it's important to be able to reproduce the exact same
release environment.

As a result, we _control the environment_ in which 'bootstrap' is run.
So far we've stuck with the latest Debian Stable.

In other words: don't run 'make dist' on your developer computer for
new releases, run it from a Debian Stable chroot.

As an exception, as of 2010-11, because of the requirement from gnulib
to upgrade the gettext infrastructure to 0.18 (while the Stable
version is 0.17), we installed Debian Testing's (Squeeze) version of
'autopoint'.  Fortunately 'autopoint' is now in a separate package,
which means we don't have to update any other gettext tool.


Naming
======

Some developers call this script 'autogen.sh', but this conflicts with
GNU AutoGen which has nothing to do with it.  So we call it
'bootstrap', as recommended in the autotools "Goat Book".
